How the risk model works

Initial capital, the Baseline, the Daily reset, the Buffer, the Reserve and the Enforced limit - the six words every other page is written in.

Six words carry the whole product. They are the words the screens use, so it is worth five minutes to learn them.

Initial capital

The Initial capital your prop firm issued - $100,000, say. cTrader cannot tell Propcockpit this number, so you state it once when you protect the account, and nothing invents it. Every Risk rule is a percentage of it: a 2% daily loss rule is a fixed $2,000, not 2% of whatever the balance happens to be this afternoon.

Baseline

The point today's loss is measured from. It is captured at the Daily reset as the higher of your balance and your equity, which is deliberately at least as strict as every firm convention Propcockpit supports. It is not marketed as identical to any firm's own rule, because it is not: it is the stricter reading, on purpose.

Daily reset

The time of day, per account, when the Baseline is recaptured and a daily Lock lifts. The FTMO preset sets midnight Central European time. The cockpit shows a countdown to it.

Buffer

What is left of today: the daily-loss limit, minus what today has already lost, minus the risk sitting in your open positions. It is the number the cockpit shows you before you press anything, and it moves with the market because open risk does.

Reserve

A slice of the daily-loss limit held back for the slippage and the fees that arrive between the moment an order is decided and the moment it fills. It defaults to a tenth of the limit and is editable per account.

It never moves the Breach line and it never blocks an action that only removes risk. Closing a position, cancelling an order and setting or tightening a stop are available whatever the Reserve is doing.

Enforced limit

Max daily loss minus the Reserve - the number Propcockpit actually gates on. It is shown wherever the limit is shown, together with what is held back, because somebody who sees 4.5% where their firm says 5% and is not told why will reasonably conclude the product is broken.

What this looks like on an order

You type a stop loss and choose a share of the account. Propcockpit prices the whole order - the distance to your stop, the spread you will cross, and the commission your broker charges - and solves for the largest volume whose full cost fits your budget. Then it checks that cost against the Buffer, against what is left of your total drawdown, and against Max open risk, and tells you which one is in the way if any of them is.